A COURSE FOR WRITERS WHO WANT TO PUBLISH

Registration closed (get on the waitlist below)

Ready to Publish Your Most Brilliant Writing?

I'm Rachel Thompson, founder of Lit Mag Love. I’m a literary magazine editor, a published author, and I have interviewed numerous editors about submissions to their journals. (Learn more about me and the course in the video.)

Does this sound familiar?

• You feel overwhelmed about sending your writing to journals. (Some of it has been languishing in drawers for years!)

• You submit to lit mags, but get frustrated with the long waits, followed by the heartbreaking sting of rejection.

• You wish you had a community of writers to champion you and your writing.

AFTER LIT MAG LOVE YOU WILL...

• Know the steps you must take to publish your work—and take those steps!• Get a big "YES" for your writing from a dream journal, and then another, and another.

• Have a warm community of writers at your fingertips, with helpful advice and support when you need it.

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If you are ready to set and reach some big goals for your writing this year, I'm here to help you reach them and more.

to find out how the lit mag love course has helped other writers, read on...

So grateful for the share by writing teacher @rachelthompson. Still applying the lessons from her Lit Mag Love and Revision Live courses.

What's it like to work with me?

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I think Lit Mag Love is a winner because it gives practical help for those writers who are ready to leap and just don't know how. Doing this with a group made it "fun" in a way and it didn't feel as if I were drudging along in my "room of one's own."

Rhonda Mitchell

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My writing life has exploded since taking the Lit Mag Love course! I've had five short stories accepted in the space of a few months (along with some inevitable rejections) and I feel I'm really on the right track.

Julia Molloy

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Rachel deeply cares about helping emerging and established writers. She believes in building and cultivating writing communities—spaces for writers to meet, share work, get feedback, and grow.

Marlena Chertock

A LIT MAG LOVE CASE STUDY:

ANNE FALKOWSKI

How Anne went from months and months of waiting and rejections to having journals fighting to publish her work.

“I had a weird thing happen,” Anne's message opened.

It turns out, Anne had submitted a piece to ten lit mags and a lower-tier place accepted her work right away. The "weird" thing was when she withdrew from the higher-tier places, two got back to her telling her they were moved by her work and one said they would have published her piece had she not withdrawn it.

Getting such positive response all at once from lit mags was not how things were for Anne before she joined Lit Mag Love.

Anne enrolled in Lit Mag Love because she was frustrated with the submission process. Up to that point, most of her work was getting rejected and she wouldn’t hear back from most literary magazines for many months.

“Getting published seemed nearly impossible,” Anne said.

Anne had gone from months and months of waiting—with many rejections—to having journals fighting to publish her work!

Lit Mag Love showed her how she had been going at submitting “all wrong.”

“As soon as I took Rachel’s advice, I started to get acceptance letters in my email. (I just wish I had listened to her about submitting to my tier-one magazines first!)”

“I highly recommend Rachel’s lit mag publishing course. It really fuels you to get published and makes the process easy. The best thing is you will see results!”

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Since taking Lit Mag Love, Anne was a finalist in The Pinch2019 Literary contest, published nonfiction with Entropy, Change Seven Magazine, Pithead Chapel, and Coachella Review. She also has her first short story forthcoming.

A LIT MAG LOVE CASE STUDY:

ROWAN MCCANDLESS

How Rowan built her writing network with no "writing establishment" connections.

Rowan McCandless's self-taught approach to the craft helped her garner some success, including award wins in prestigious journals.

“I had had some success with pieces that I’d submitted to contests, but I didn’t really know how to develop my network of where I would submit from there,” Rowan says.

Rowan joined Lit Mag Love because she lacked a writing network and connections to editors.

The guest editors who answered her questions in the course helped her do the networking she needed. “Those experiences were so informative,” she says. “They were just like little gifts, little writerly gifts.”

“Rachel created this online community of writers where we can meet and talk about our submissions successes and struggles and questions and comments.”

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Since taking Lit Mag Love, Rowan won the Constance Rooke CNF Prize, published with The Fiddlehead, The Malahat Review, and Prairie Fire.

A LIT MAG LOVE CASE STUDY:

TAMARA JONG

How Tamara went from the heartbreak of rejection to saying "yes" to her writing.

Before taking Lit Mag Love, Tamara had just heard back from a big MFA program with a big "NO!" (That's how she says it felt to her. Written in all caps and with an exclamation mark.)

This big NO! shook her. She stopped writing for a month, and was "wrapped in a cocoon of self-doubt." But a little voice inside her still wanted to be a writer. The spark was still alive.

Tamara decided to try Lit Mag Love in the hopes of finding her way back to writing.

Through Lit Mag Love, Tamara learned to focus on her own motivations for sharing and submitting her writing and to build a plan that suits her true goals for her writing career.

She worked with a renewed passion through the lessons, polished up her writing, and started sending out her work with a clear strategy tailored to her aspirations. Tamara shared encouragement with her peers in the Lit Mag Love community, and they shared the same with her.

"I had new energy for pieces that I dreaded revising and I submitted more work in a few months than the year before." Tamara had come back to writing​.

While in the course, Tamara decided to apply for another writing program—this time she got a big "YES!"

"I would not have been able to do all this if I hadn't taken the course which helped me be more intentional with my submissions, deal with rejection (because it's part of the writer's deal), make some great new supportive writer friends (who totally get the writing ups and downs)."

“I am indebted to Rachel and this wonderful course and recommend any of her courses. Rachel is a writer who gets writing.”

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Since taking Lit Mag Love, Tamara has published her writing in the anthology Body & Soul: Stories for Skeptics and Seekers,Room, and Carte Blanche.

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Lit Mag Love taught me to be more professional in terms of the writing practice. Getting published isn't just throwing your work into the dark. You have to be strategic about it. I really liked that Lit Mag Love broke it down into specific goals.

ANGELA WRIGHT

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I highly recommend this course to anyone who wants to publish in literary magazines, but really any writer who is interested in joining a community and honing their craft.

HEATHER RINGO

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Lit Mag Love was the impetus I needed to get serious and motivated about my submissions. Rachel was a luminous guide offering equal parts gentle prompts and discerning truths.

DEBORAH JOHNSTONE

long-arrow-down

COURSE DETAILS

next live SESSION ​tba

Once registered, you will have lifetime access to the lessons, as well as free updated and new lessons.

Each video lesson in the course comes with concrete, detailed assignment. You will need to have 3-5 hours available per week of the course session to do the assignment, but you set your own schedule. (You could skip a week and double-up the next, for example.)

Each week in the course we have office hours where you can come and ask questions live. I set the times for our live calls based upon when the current cohort is available (and I will set up personal meetings with any outliers). Video replays are available after each live call.

CURRICULUM

MODULE 1: TAILOR a LIST OF PUBLICATIONS

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Get Clear About Why You Want to Publish in Journals

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Explore the Lit Mag Landscape

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Pairing Journals to Fit Your Writing Goals

MODULE 2: PREPARE YOUR SUBMISSION

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What Do Editors Want?

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Ready Your Writing

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Preparing Your Submission

MODULE 3: BUILD YOUR SUBMISSIONS SYSTEM

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Goals & Systems

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Fine-Tune Your Lit Mag List

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The Cover Letter

MODULE 4: PREPARE FOR FEEDBACK

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Rejection and Hyper-Critical Feedback

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Types of Rejection

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The Art of Acceptance

Live calls & FEEDBACK ​

I offer two types of feedback and support to help you learn and improve during the course:

1) I hold weekly live Q&A group calls to help clarify any questions you have about the lessons and make sure that you have what you need to keep going. In the live calls, often other writers will ask questions that you didn't even know you had. Writers tell me the live calls gave them a confidence boost and a lot of warm, helpful support.

2) I am available throughout the week in our course community—a secure group in Slack where you can ask questions and get quick answers (I usually respond within 24 hours), plus interact with other writers in the program.

​Bonus: Commit to Submit Club

If you complete all of the course assignments during the live five-weeks of the course, you will automatically be able to join our quarterly commit to submit club meetings. These meetings allow you to continue connecting with your writing peers from the course, and get feedback from me on your ongoing submissions strategy.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

When does the live course start and end?

The next live course date TBA. After the live course, you'll keep lifetime access to the materials and updates.

Umm...So, what exactly are lit mags?

Good question! Lit mags is short for literary magazines, and are also known as literary journals. They typically publish at least one genre of creative writing—nonfiction/essays, fiction, poetry, or mixed-genre forms. (And they may niche-down further into sub-genres of these forms.) For the purposes of this course, we look at any publication online, in e-book, or in print that will publish short fiction, creative nonfiction (essays, memoir), and poetry. The publications many people are familiar with are The New Yorker, or The Paris Review, but there are many, many lit mags out there and part of the course involves getting to know the various and vast lit mag landscape.

What days and times will Office Hours be held?

I set our office hours at times based on an initial survey of the registered students, and I make sure there's at least one time per week that will work for everyone. (If that's impossible, I will set up individual sessions with outliers.) Video replays are also available after each live call.

What writing do i need to have prepared?

It is ideal, but not required, that you have a draft submission of creative nonfiction, fiction, poetry, or mixed-genre writing prepared for this course. Don't worry if it's not "there" yet—we're going to work on this in the course.

What is your refund policy?

You have 30 days to request a refund for the course, and if you do, you must provide proof that you did each of the homework assignments in the first half of the course to qualify for a refund.

Can I pay in installments?

Yes. Email me at rachel@litmaglove.com when the course registration is open, and I will set up your installment payment plan and register you in the course.

What are commit to submit meetings?

If you complete all of the course assignments during the live five-weeks of the course, you will automatically be able to join our quarterly commit to submit club meetings. These meetings allow you to continue connecting with your writing peers from the course, and get feedback from me on your ongoing submissions strategy.

Am I ready to take this step for my writing?

You read all the FAQs and made it to the bottom of this LONG page, so I think you answered your own question. (Yes!)